Tag: Israel

The United States for a second week in a row blocked a UN Security Council statement supporting the right of Palestinians to “demonstrate peacefully” and endorsing Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for an independent investigation into deadly protests in Gaza.

Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters at UN headquarters in New York on Friday evening that 14 of the 15 council nations agreed to the statement, but the United States, Israel’s closest ally, objected. — www.timesofisrael.com/…

Nikki Haley’s move to block a recognition of Palestinian’s rights was opposed by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN. Trump’s mid-east envoy, Jason Greenblatt said Gazans should obey Israeli commands to keep out of the half a kilometer wide strip of Gaza near the border.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon claimed Palestinians were using “children as human shields”. Danon’s sudden concern for the children of Gaza is perplexing, since he has previously advocated for wanton bombing of Gaza, where fully half the population are children. In 2011, Danon said Israel should be “deleting a neighborhood in Gaza” to retaliate for Hamas’ rockets. In 2014, after an Israeli soldier was kidnapped, Danon said the IDF should “start leveling Gaza”.

Two Palestinians succumbed early Saturday to injuries sustained in a protest on the border fence with Israel a day earlier, including a journalist shot by Israeli forces despite apparently wearing a vest that clearly marked him as press.

Video and photos of Yasser Murtaja, 31, being treated after sustaining a bullet wound to the lower abdomen, including one shot by Agence France-Presse news agency, show him wearing a blue and white protective jacket with “PRESS” emblazoned on the front.

Murtaja, who worked for a Gaza-based news agency called Ain Media, was one of six Palestinian journalists shot, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, which said they were all clearly identifiable as media. The Israeli military has maintained that the shooting into the border crowds is carefully targeted. It could not immediately provide a comment on how six journalists could have been shot. — www.washingtonpost.com/…

Nikki Haley has consistently worked to advance Trump’s bellicose agenda in the Middle-East. Some suspect her disregard for Palestinian rights is cultivated to further her political ambitions. Last year, she worked to undermine the Iran nuclear deal which had been negotiated by the Obama administration. In this effort, she was supported by former John Bolton, who has now been installed as National Security Advisor:

Haley wasn’t alone. The fingerprints of former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, whose access to Trump was recently limited by chief of staff John Kelly, were also on Trump’s Friday address in the form of a warning that Trump, who opted not to push for steps that could undo the nuclear agreement, could still cancel the deal “at any time.”

The line was added to Trump’s speech after Bolton, despite Kelly’s recent edict, reached the president by phone on Thursday afternoon from Las Vegas, where Bolton was visiting with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson.

Tens of thousands of Gazans walked toward the border facing a heavily armed Israeli line. They walked toward rifles and drones. Israel had announced its deployment of a hundred snipers authorized to use live ammunition. And fire they did; the United Nations reports 15 dead and 1,416 wounded, including 750 hit by live ammunition, of whom 20 are in critical condition. […]

The Israeli army additionally militarizes a belt of Gaza’s agricultural land, intruding a further 300 to 500 meters into Gaza. That is the zone in which live fire is being used. Gazans are walking and being killed, on their own land. Walking in protest is not a capital crime in other places, and human rights group B’Tselem calls Israel’s attempt to control the Gaza protest with live fire “absurd.” — www.haaretz.com/…

As if penning almost 2 million people within 140 sq miles for decades wasn’t enough, Israeli authorities have carved a half kilometer strip inside Gaza as a free-fire zone for snipers and drones.

Shai Eluk served as a medic among IDF snipers six years ago. Writing in +972mag, he talks about what he felt when his friends were ordered to fire at protesters in 2012:

This order, which never explained exactly how a soldier is meant to identify, isolate, and shoot a “main inciter” out of tens of thousands of demonstrators disturbed me then. It continued to disturb me this past weekend, after IDF snipers opened fire on Palestinian marchers at the Gaza border. “How can opening fire at a crowd of people be a legal order?” I asked my deputy company commander six years ago. I have yet to receive an answer.

One of my friends killed a demonstrator on the border with Gaza. I am part of a group that carries this death on its shoulders. The only difference between myself and my friend is chance. Had I been sent to the sniper course rather than the medics course, I would have been that shooter. — mag.com/…

Whenever I see unarmed Palestinian protesters being shot or beaten by Israeli troops and it's met with silence from all the self-styled 'liberal interventionists' in the West, it reminds me how morally bankrupt – and hypocritical – the whole 'liberal intervention' schtick is.

Where indeed, are all those voices who advocate military interventions? Why are they silent when Bahrain or Saudi Arabia suppress demonstrations? Why are they silent when Israeli soldiers fire on Palestinian demonstrators? Why aren’t they advocating sanctions under the Leahy amendments directed at Israeli army units that willfully violate Palestinian’s human rights?

As a close ally that receives billions in military support each year violently suppressed a protest, most American politicians remained silent. With a few exceptions:

I am horrified by the tragic wounding & killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza last Friday. Attacks on peaceful Palestinian protesters must end, and the U.S. & the international community must do more to support a resolution to the conflict. https://t.co/gloUgvPmpD

PSA: 1) what happened in Gaza this weekend should be unacceptable to anyone who stands on the side of justice. The State attacked and murdered protesters. If it was happening anywhere else, folks in the West would have something to say about it.

Human Rights Watch issued a report on the violent suppression of the protest:

Senior Israeli officials who unlawfully called for use of live ammunition against Palestinian demonstrations who posed no imminent threat to life bear responsibility for the killings of 14 demonstrators in Gaza and the injuring of hundreds on March 30, 2018, Human Rights Watch said today. […] The high number of deaths and injuries was the foreseeable consequence of granting soldiers leeway to use lethal force outside of life-threatening situations in violation of international norms, coupled with the longstanding culture of impunity within the Israeli army for serious abuses. — www.hrw.org/…

Khadrah Zaqout, 76, was busy baking a fresh, homemade loaf of bread in a mud oven that provides for her family of nine. She said she intends to remain all day in the tent to demand her right to return to her home city, which was abandoned in 1948 when the state of Israel was established.

“I am from the city of Majdal [Ashkelon], where I was born and lived the most beautiful days of my life,” she said. “I still remember our beautiful house, the olive tree and the chicken coop.”

“I brought my grandsons with me to the protest to show them the way to their historical homeland, the land of Palestine,” she said. — www.latimes.com/…

Following the vote, DSA has come in for criticism from various angles. The Jerusalem Post criticized DSA for holding the vote on Saturday. The pro-Likud ‘zine Tablet said the DSA was a “disgrace” that had “descended into anti-Zionism”. The JTA suggested the DSA were allied with the Palestinian-American activist (and co-organizer of the Women’s March) Linda Sarsour and this was a bad thing.

Yet, as this thread expertly demonstrates, much of the criticism of BDS is exactly what was leveled against proponents of boycotting South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Meanwhile, Jodi Rudoren, formerly the New York Time’s editor in Jerusalem admits they censor opinions and reporting due to attacks and pressure from pro-Israel organizations.

The former New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem Jodi ­Rudoren has admitted to “defensive writing” after several “Twitter campaigns” against her. Rudoren says this was “to protect ­myself and keep me focused on the essence of what I’m trying to do instead of these distractions but you could totally get out of hand with this”. She says there is not a healthy debate in the US about Israel because of the power of pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.

The interviews are contained in Balcony Over Jerusalem, in which journalists tell how they come under attack from pro-Israel groups if they ­report what they see in Israel and the West Bank.

The New York Times’ Rudoren says that because the occupation of the Palestinians has gone on for so long — 50 years — it has started to look “a lot like apartheid”. While Rudoren was talking about the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, she also addressed the plight of Palestinians in Israel — the so-called Arab Israelis. She says: “I actually think the issue of apartheid is more relevant to how Arab Israelis are treated within the framework of the country (Israel).” — www.theaustralian.com.au/…

Jonathan Cook writing in Alternet covers the relentless campaign to influence coverage of Israel by pressuring journalists, editors and publishers. His analysis is very thorough, discussing the ways in which individual journalists end up self-censoring, and how editors cave in by developing “guidelines” . He also examines more subtle influences, for example the NYT’s tacit policy to only appoint Jewish reporters as heads of the Jerusalem division. Rudoren’s predecessor actually had children serving in the IDF. One of the most powerful testimonials is from Clyde Haberman, whose byline should be familiar to all:

Here is another veteran NYT correspondent, Clyde Haberman, telling Lyons that the lobby’s “non-stop assault” on the paper’s Jerusalem correspondents has made the posting a poisoned chalice. Few want it, says Haberman.

“We’ve had decades of correspondents that, no matter how talented they are or how many Pulitzer Prizes they have to their name, always end up being accused of being either anti-Semites or self-hating Jews; at some point, this seeps into the DNA of the newspaper. This is what you can expect if you go there—to have your integrity hurled back in your face every single day,” he says.

Pause for a second. Unless I have wildly misunderstood the implication of “seeping into the newspaper’s DNA”, a leading journalist at the U.S. paper of record has just suggested that for decades its reporters and editors have toned down their coverage to avoid run-ins with the Israel lobby. As near as he dare, Haberman has conceded that you won’t learn the full truth about Israel and Palestine from the NYT.

Senate bill 720 seeks to criminalize speech supporting a boycott of Israel. The bill is meant to target the growing BDS movement. Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.

This anti-boycott bill is part of a long tradition that seeks to undermine labor, civil rights and liberation movements employing non-violent protest. I’ll explore the history of anti-boycott laws later in the diary.

If the bill is enacted, violators would be subject to criminal penalties including imprisonment for up to 20 years. Here’s the letter the ACLU sent to the Senate yesterday:

The bill seeks to expand the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945 which, among other things, prohibit U.S. persons from complying with a foreign government’s request to boycott a country friendly to the U.S. The bill would amend those laws to bar U.S. persons from supporting boycotts against Israel, including its settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, conducted by international governmental organizations, such as the United Nations and the European Union. It would also broaden the law to include penalties for simply requesting information about such boycotts. Violations would be subject to a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison. We take no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country, for that matter. However, we do assert that the government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, punish U.S. persons based solely on their expressed political beliefs.

There is a House version as well. What’s deeply troubling is that many of the Senators and Representatives co-sponsoring this bill do not seem to understand its implications. The Intercept called the offices of several Democratic co-sponsors who were unaware that the bill criminalizes support for a boycott.

But now, a group of 43 Senators – 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats – want to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: anyone guilty of violating its prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000, and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

The 14 Democrats who want to make it a felony for Americans to support a boycott of Israel are:

Ben Cardin (MD)

Bill Nelson (FL)

Robert Menendez (NJ)

Richard Blumenthal (CT)

Gary Peters (MI)

Maria Cantwell (WA)

Chuck Schumer (NY)

Maria Cantwell (NH)

Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)

Joe Donnelly (IN)

Joe Manchin (WV)

Ron Wyden (OR)

Chris Coons (DE)

Michael Bennett (CO)

The bill is part of a concerted campaign by anti-Palestinian groups to criminalize non-violent protest of Israel’s oppressive policies and violation of Palestinian’s human rights. Concerted pressure by left-wing activists is a concern for the Israeli government which has been accustomed to unquestioned support from most European and US administrations. In 2015, the EU instituted labelling requirements which direct Israeli companies to clearly label agricultural products made in the Occupied Territories. It is illegal for occupying powers to exploit the natural resources (including land) in any way. The US went almost as far, by issuing a statement that effectively warned Israeli companies from labelling goods made in the West Bank or East Jerusalem as “Made in Israel”.

The push-back from anti-Palestinian groups has been severe. Those who support, or even fail to oppose, a boycott of Israel modeled on the South African example, have been viciously attacked. Pamela Geller’s outfit called various left-wing Jewish organizations “judenrat” and “kapos” last year when they opposed anti-BDS laws at the state level.

AIPAC has been pushing several versions of anti-BDS legislation through state legislatures for years. They’ve been successful to varying degrees, in Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina and Illinois. The bill seeks to criminalize speech supporting BDS in the US, in the same way it is in Israel. The Israeli Supreme Court has called the BDS movement “political terrorism” and allowed publishers to be sued for printing statements supporting BDS. The Senate and House bills seek to do something similar here, by criminalizing non-violent protest and political speech. Similar attempts have had some success in Europe. A French court fined activists protesting at a grocery store $14,500 for wearing t-shirts that supported BDS. That is the sort of reality American protestors might face as well.

A note on the history of anti-boycott laws and how they have been used to suppress dissent, unions and liberation movements is below.

The Forward discussed the origins of this bill in their brief note:

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, introduced in March by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would expand 1970s-era laws that bar complying with boycotts of Israel sponsored by governments — laws inspired at the time by the Arab League boycott of Israel — to include boycotts backed by international organizations. Those adhering to boycotts would be the subject of fines.

While the measure is aimed at the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, it also targets efforts by the United Nations and the European Union to distinguish products manufactured in Israel from those manufactured in West Bank settlements.

It’s worth noting at this point, the long history on anti-boycott laws, which were first employed at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th as a tool against organized labor. In 1901, Deitrich Loewe opened a non-union factory in Danbury, CT. The United Hatters of America (UHU) led a strike and worked with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to promote a national boycott by consumers, wholesalers and retailers. Loewe filed suit contending the boycott was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case was Loewe v Lawlor, and Loewe won in the Supreme Court. For years, the courts continued to issue injunctions against boycotts and strikes, and supporting employers who forced employees to sign non-unionization contracts (yellow dog contracts).

These practices continued till the 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act, which, among other things exempted labor unions from antitrust laws. The US Supreme Court applied Norris-LaGuardia in the New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. case in 1938, supporting the right of workers to organize a boycott. In this case it was black workers protesting discriminatory hiring practices. Since then, there’s been a long history of labor organized boycotts in the US, including the salad bowl strike organized by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

Boycotts have a long history in liberation struggles and anti-colonial movements. In particular, Gandhi (building on the thoughts of an earlier generation of leaders including Naoroji) led a successful boycott of British goods during the Indian independence struggle. The Indian Swadeshi movement lasted for almost half a century, and intentionally targeted the economic underpinnings of colonial exploitation.

A more recent example is the South African boycott movement, which applied sustained pressure on the apartheid-era government to end the practice of apartheid. Israel was a close ally of the South-African government. The Israeli government has such a concerted focus on BDS because it’s aware of how the South African apartheid regime was forced to end its discriminatory practices under pressure from an international boycott.

White officials in Alabama conducted two concerted efforts to defeat Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement legally, by indicting King for violating an anti-boycotting law during the Montgomery bus boycott and for income tax fraud, in 1956 and 1960, respectively.

On 21 February 1956 King was indicted by the Montgomery County Grand Jury for his boycott of the Montgomery City Lines, Inc. According to the State of Alabama, King and 89 others violated a 1921 statute that outlawed boycotts against businesses. — kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/…

Attempts by states to criminalize civil rights related boycotts continued up until the 1980s:

The case, N.A.A.C.P. v. Claiborne Hardware, arose out of a 16-year effort by black civil rights leaders to achieve some modicum of racial equality in Claiborne County in Mississippi. In 1966, black citizens of the county, under the leadership of Charles Evers, field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, presented white elected officials with a petition for constitutional equality. Included were such fundamental demands as desegregation of public schools, selection of blacks for jury duty, integration of the public toilets in the county courthouse, and insistence that ”Negroes are not to be addressed by terms as ‘boy,’ ‘girl,’ ‘shine,’ ‘uncle,’ or any other offensive term, but as ‘Mr.,’ ‘Mrs.,’ or ‘Miss,’ as is the case with other citizens.”

These demands were ignored, and, in response the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter organized a boycott of white merchants in the area. The boycott proved singularly effective, so effective that Mississippi officials reacted with a legal attack.

After years of litigation, a Mississippi trial court found that the boycotters had unlawfully and maliciously interfered with the white merchants’ businesses, engaged in a secondary boycott in violation of state law and violated the Mississippi antitrust statute. Damages, penalties and attorney’s fees of $1.25 million plus interest were assessed against the N.A.A.C.P. and 130 individuals. The Mississippi Supreme Court reduced the damages and rejected some of the trial court’s legal theories – including a ruling that retroactively applied a state statute enacted two years after the boycott had begun – but it nonetheless found the boycott to be a violation of state law.

In July 1982, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously for the NAACP, and said that calls for violence by some could not be used to criminalize non-violent protest by others. In Justice Stevens’ decision he wrote:

”One of the foundations of our society is the right of individuals to combine with other persons in pursuit of a common goal by lawful means.”

“[Legal] liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence.”

‘A massive and prolonged effort to change the social and political and economic structure of a local environment cannot be characterized as a violent conspiracy simply by reference to the ephemeral consequences of relatively few violent acts.’

PS. I am deeply indebted to a fellow Kossack who, years ago, shared their substantive knowledge of the history of anti-boycott laws with me.

Taking in the scene of a simulated fruit market in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, a group of tourists ponders whether a poster-size figure of an Arab man holding a cellphone is a threat and should be shot.

The aim of the mock scenario is to teach rapt foreign visitors how to deal with an attack on a market. It is part of a counter-terrorism “boot camp” organized by Caliber 3, a company set up by a colonel in the Israeli army reserves.

Entrance to the gated compound in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc – built on land the Palestinians want for their own state – costs $115 for adults and $85 for children.

Companies specializing in this sort of military tourism, she notes, have experienced a boom in business over the past year. “For a long time, it was popular for Jewish tourists, and especially organized missions, to visit Israeli army bases and meet with the soldiers and watch them during their military exercises,” says Sand, the founder of Travel Composer, a boutique Israeli agency that specializes in luxury tours.

“Often, donations would be handed over in exchange. But last year the army began cracking down after it emerged that these visits were becoming a major disruption. So for those who still want to experience the Israeli army, these for-profit facilities provide a great alternative.” […]

As his [Caliber 3’s owner] instructors like to point out, it’s not only Israeli soldiers who operate according to the army’s “purity of arms” doctrine, which stipulates that soldiers will maintain their humanity even in combat. So do their attack dogs. At a live demonstration, the visitors watch as Zeus lunges at a “terrorist” wielding a knife, forcing him to the ground while tearing into his padded coverall. But once that knife is dropped and the threat is eliminated, Zeus backs off. “Even the dogs in the IDF value human life,” the instructor says.

This statement that the IDF “value human life” is questionable. The IDF has had radical, insurgent elements within it for decades and depending on the government in charge, hard-line factions have been ascendant within the command structure. Lately the religious-nationalist settler movement has gained power within the army. These trends accelerated after Likud first won election and Rafael Eitan was appointed Chief of Staff of the IDF (prior the 1982 Lebanon war).

Caliber 3, which is based in the West Bank and run by a former member of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), calls itself “the premier academy for counter terror and security”. It offers six programs for tourists, including desert “Survival Training”, krav magna martial arts, and “Combat Rappelling” using paintball guns.

Its “Ultimate Shooting Adventure” has raised eyebrows for its use of real guns and simulated terror attacks – with targets dressed up in Palestinian keffiyehs. […]

He [the owner Gat] said that the thought came to him after thinking about the horrors of the Holocaust. “I said to myself that I am going to open this place to the public to show what a long way the Jewish people have come in 75 years,” he said.

“The most shocking part was when they had us shout ‘terrorist’ before getting into shooting position,” he said.

He enjoyed the course and felt it was safe but morally questionable. “It could indoctrinate children with racist beliefs. It was sad to hear young kids express such racism. It makes the likelihood or reaching a peaceful settlement to the (Middle East) crisis seem more difficult.” In the group before his, James said, excited children shouted to their parents about being able to “shoot the Arabs.” […]

But Gat [the instructor] says his course is not just about shooting guns; it also teaches “Zionist values.”

Palestinians have lived for 50 years under a military occupation by a foreign government and there are no signs this will end anytime soon. The Israeli government has been busily dispossessing Palestinians as individuals and as a nation of land and resources. Three generations of Palestinians have lived the bulk of their lives (five decades) with their human and civil rights curtailed by the Israeli government.

[US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki] Haley arrived in Israel to a hero’s welcome one day after warning that the United States might pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council unless it changes its ways in general and its negative stance on Israel in particular.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who often is touted as a future Republican presidential candidate, has focused heavily on what she calls the mistreatment of Israel during her six months at the United Nations. Her efforts have made her a darling of Israeli leaders, and have endeared her to conservative pro-Israel organizations in the United States. […]

“You know, all I’ve done is to tell the truth, and it’s kind of overwhelming at the reaction,” she said. “It was a habit. And if there’s anything I have no patience for it’s bullies, and the U.N. was being such a bully to Israel, because they could.” — WaPo

Israeli policies towards Palestinians have many parallels with our own treatment of Native Americans. There are other parallels to our history too. For much of the 20th century, towns across the US systematically excluded African-Americans from living there.

What Palestinians are allowed to do in the settlements is work, assuming they can pass a rigorous security screening and a get a permit. But the workers — mostly in construction and service jobs — are not allowed to drive in, and they can’t spend the night. During my two weeks in the West Bank, I learned that the best way to estimate the number of Palestinians working in a given settlement at any moment is by counting the cars parked just outside the gate. This underscored one of the ironies of the settlements, which is that Palestinian hands built most of them: their houses and synagogues, their community centers and shopping malls. — Washington Post

Palestinians are often building these houses for settlers on public Palestinian lands which the Israeli government or settlers have encroached on. In other cases, Israeli officials will condemn private Palestinian lands, establishing “nature preserves” which then turn into gardens or farms for Israeli settlers.

Across Israel proper, housing discrimination is pervasive and various types of discrimination are codified into law. Most housing is largely segregated, with Jewish Israelis living in separate towns and communities, from their Arab Muslim or Christian fellow-citizens. Of course, in the occupied territories, the Israeli army enforces such segregation, just as law enforcement and vigilante groups did in the US.

Such discrimination and oppression is only possible if you successfully propagate a supporting narrative through schools and media. Gil Gertel writing in +972mag discusses how the Israeli education system has helped sanitize Palestinian suffering:

In the wake of the 1948 War, the list of people we forgot only got longer — refugees whom we continued not to see. This is what students read about that period from the “Artzi” textbook, published in 1950: “It is very good that we found a desolate and abandoned land. It is good that every piece of land we obtained is for us […] none of those who hate us (and their numbers are great) can complain that we took someone else’s land.

This book was published two years after the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. The Israeli government subsequently razed to the ground hundreds of villages to prevent the inhabitants from ever returning. The JNF began a campaign to plant “forests” to erase evidence of Palestinian villages. Palestinian houses in urban areas were reassigned to Jewish persons.

Students, however, were told it was a “desolate and abandoned land”. In a way, this is analogous to the stories we still tell our students about early European colonization of this country and the impact on Native American peoples.

This is what we teach our children, from a fifth-grade textbook: “In 1967, following the Six-Day War, the territories of Judea and Samaria, which were not yet in Israeli hands, came under its control. Today it is populated by both Arabs and Jews. The Arab population, according to estimates, is comprised of 1.5-2.5 million people, who live mostly in urban areas […] the Jewish population is closer to 400,000, who live in approximately 125 settlements.” (pg. 156). How idyllic: those territories “came under our control,” a real miracle. Jews and and Arabs living side by side — the Switzerland of the Middle East.

As the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza approaches, there will be several lengthy retrospectives. One of the better ones was, surprisingly, published by the NY Times today.

Nathan Thrall is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. He’s also the author of “The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine.” he makes a persuasive case that the Israeli occupation is on track to run another 50 years, aided and abetted by the US. The widely held misconception that the occupation is unsustainable and prone to collapse any minute now, under the weight of its own inequity and oppression is part of what keeps it going.

Israel, with the strongest army in the region, has repeatedly demonstrated that it can endure and outlast whatever bursts of resistance the divided and exhausted Palestinians can muster.

The next threats, too, came up empty. The rise of nominally pro-Palestinian powers like India and China has, to date, had no negative effect on Israel, which has strengthened ties with both countries. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, though noisy on some American campuses, has yet to make a dent in Israel’s economy or its citizens’ self-reported level of life satisfaction, among the highest in the world. — NY Times

The article is well worth your time. It doesn’t, however, directly contend with the NY Times and western media’s role in perpetuating the occupation. That is probably best captured by Malcolm X:

The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s a the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. — Speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem (13 December 1964)